# Launcher seems to be ignored in the preferences

**URL:** <https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840>\
**Category:** Processing\
**Created:** [May 2, 2019, 11:28am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840 "2019-05-02T11:28:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hamoid](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/hamoid/32/58_2.png) [@hamoid](https://discourse.processing.org/u/hamoid)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2019, 11:28am UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/1 "2019-05-02T11:28:20Z")

</div>

Hi! In my preferences.txt I have a line like this:

```
launcher=/home/user/bin/showDirectory.fish

```

This used to work fie in the past but not anymore. When I press CTRL+K it opens a terminal window which closes immediately. Inside the script I added `echo "1" > /tmp/AAA` to verify it is running, but the file AAA is not created. Calling `showDirectory.fish` from the command line works as expected.

I tried replacing `launcher=` with `launcher.linux=`, but no change.

I can’t use `Show Sketch Folder`. Any suggestions?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeremydouglass](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/jeremydouglass/32/20_2.png) [@jeremydouglass](https://discourse.processing.org/u/jeremydouglass)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 2:22pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/2 "2019-05-03T14:22:34Z")

</div>

> [@hamoid](#):
>
> This used to work fie in the past but not anymore.

Do you know around which point version of PDE this stopped working?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hamoid](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/hamoid/32/58_2.png) [@hamoid](https://discourse.processing.org/u/hamoid)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/3 "2019-05-03T14:57:35Z")

</div>

Unfortunately not. In the current version when I choose Show Sketch Folder it opens a terminal window and closes it immediately. I just tried in 3.4 and it doesn’t even seem to try 🙂 So no quickly appearing/disappearing window.

I guess it’s something related to my system.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeremydouglass](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/jeremydouglass/32/20_2.png) [@jeremydouglass](https://discourse.processing.org/u/jeremydouglass)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 3:23pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/4 "2019-05-03T15:23:47Z")

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If it is your system – does a regular bash/sh shell script work? Any chance it is permissions related to your custom fish shell?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hamoid](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/hamoid/32/58_2.png) [@hamoid](https://discourse.processing.org/u/hamoid)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 3:41pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/5 "2019-05-03T15:41:54Z")

</div>

Oops ignore what I wrote earlier: it does work with 3.4!

I had commented out the part that opens the window and added a line that creates an empty file in /tmp just for testing. So when I tried with 3.4 it actually worked fine, it created that file.

So something in the most recent Processing breaks this in my system: the script doesn’t seem to be executed at all (my test file is not created) with bash / fish / sh.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeremydouglass](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/jeremydouglass/32/20_2.png) [@jeremydouglass](https://discourse.processing.org/u/jeremydouglass)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 3:45pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/6 "2019-05-03T15:45:59Z")

</div>

It sounds like you have enough information to submit an issue to [https://github.com/processing/processing/issues](https://github.com/processing/processing/issues)

To investigate yourself you could try searching for “launcher”

> **[processing/processing](https://github.com/processing/processing/search?q=launcher&unscoped_q=launcher)**
>
> Source code for the Processing Core and Development Environment (PDE) - processing/processing

…and then using Blame view to inspect code around that feature, e.g.:

> **[processing/processing](https://github.com/processing/processing/blame/5ab60c84ac61b9c8c5ac0f1c81d0420d75918c2e/app/src/processing/app/platform/LinuxPlatform.java#L115)**
>
> Source code for the Processing Core and Development Environment (PDE) - processing/processing

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hamoid](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/hamoid/32/58_2.png) [@hamoid](https://discourse.processing.org/u/hamoid)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:05pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/7 "2019-05-03T16:05:13Z")

</div>

I see the problem at

> <https://github.com/processing/processing/commit/5ab60c84ac61b9c8c5ac0f1c81d0420d75918c2e#diff-3617718d2e0975d588a3a0f87bcceaa6>

Before

```
Preferences.get("launcher");

```

had priority if it was set. Now it does

```
if(Desktop.isDesktopSupported()) { super.openFolder(file); }

```

which triggers

```
 Desktop.getDesktop().open(file);

```

in `DefaultPlatform` (ignoring the preferences). Thanks for the help! Knowing what’s the issue is good enough for me 🙂

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jeremydouglass](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/jeremydouglass/32/20_2.png) [@jeremydouglass](https://discourse.processing.org/u/jeremydouglass)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:19pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/8 "2019-05-03T16:19:38Z")

</div>

Really glad that helped.

Would this still count as a bug for others? If so, it might still be worth filing a bug or feature request.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![hamoid](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex036/user_avatar/discourse.processing.org/hamoid/32/58_2.png) [@hamoid](https://discourse.processing.org/u/hamoid)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 4:39pm UTC](https://discourse.processing.org/t/launcher-seems-to-be-ignored-in-the-preferences/10840/9 "2019-05-03T16:39:49Z")

</div>

I think it is confusing to have the `launcher` option which gets ignored if a certain condition is met. But I guess preferences.txt is mostly undocumented. I’ll let someone else open the issue 🙂

I’ll leave a keyword here in case someone struggles with this: xdg-open